HeyWatch – AWS-Powered Video Encoding

Update (December 2023) – Eric emailed to let me know that HeyWatch is now Coconut. I have adjusted the names and links in this post accordingly — Jeff;

Earlier this week I spent some time on the phone with Eric Fontaine of Coconut (formerly HeyWatch). Eric gave me some background information on their video encoding and sharing platform and I thought I would share it with you. Coconut has been making use of AWS since 2006 and I am a bit embarrassed that it has taken me this long to find the time to write about it.

Anyway, they offer a professional level video encoding platform. The platform is accessible through the Coconut API and can encode videos of any duration or file size. It supports all formats and all devices and is ready to support HTML5. You can even create your own video format by specifying the bitrate, size, codec, and container.

Coconut uses Amazon S3 as its primary storage system for encoded videos. An existing in-house server handles some of the encoding work, with automatic spillover into Amazon EC2 when things get busy.

In order to Coconut you purchase credits and then use them to pay for your encoding tasks. Each credit costs $0.10. Encoding costs between 1 and 4 credits ($0.10 to $0.40) depending on the quality (SD or HD), the duration, and the use of 1-pass or 2-pass encoding. You can sign up here and take advantage of a 15-day trial.

Eric told me that they have a number of high-profile customers including the very popular Tumblr blogging platform. All user videos uploaded to Tumblr are automatically routed to Coconut and encoded for viewing on Tumblr and on mobile devices.

— Jeff;